Why does it seem preposterous? If anything it seems dangerously not-preposterous, a sort of epidemiological “common sense” explanation.

Lots of people experienced stuff like “getting chickenpox and then gaining immunity,” so the idea that not getting any illnesses for a couple years during lockdown would result in us being resistant to fewer illnesses seems not at all preposterous.

Apparently general infection rates are still high, so it didn’t bear out. But preposterous? Not really…

▲ GoatInGrey 13 hours ago | parent | next [-]

From an evidence-based perspective, it's preposterous primarily because it originates from the 2021 Cohen paper in which they open with unequivocal assertions that immunity debt is real, then walk back on the literal last page to apply the term MAY to their theory. If it started from an instance of a classic motte-and-bailey fallacy, it gets automatically thrown on the mountain of failed research attempts. Because we don't have time to give every sqawk its full due. Particularly if the sqawker isn't even taking their own ideas seriously.

https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/covid-19-medical-critical-...

The fact that it conceptually makes sense to a layperson is irrelevant in a truth-seeking context. Much for the same reason that a theory that Google functions by paid human labors manually assigning results to search queries they predict you will search ahead of time "making sense" to a layperson is meaningless in discovering how the system actually works.

▲ paulryanrogers 13 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Having had chicken pox twice, and read up on shingles, please get your kids vaccinated. Surviving an infection doesn't make us stronger, at least not at the individual level.

▲

itbeho 7 hours ago | parent [-]

I had chicken pox once and have never had shingles. What does your anecdata have to do with mine?

	▲	pama 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Shingles comes to you after you are 70 in most cases. Please get the shingles vaccine well before then.

▲ Symmetry 13 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Of course exposure to a disease will make your body more able to deal with that particular disease. The question is whether it will make your immune system stronger in general like your muscles, or whether it tends to be depleted like your blood sugar. In general because you immune system has a finite memory for diseases and because diseases tend to mutate faster when infecting larger number of people its more like the later.

▲ defrost 10 hours ago | parent [-]

The position put forward in the BMJ paper is, as per your comment,

  >  In general because your immune system has a finite memory for diseases and because

and then leans in hard on the erosion and depletion of that finite memory held within the T cell population

  SARS-CoV-2 is linked to “an unusually high level of ‘indiscriminate’ killing of T cells,”6 says Leitner, adding that this observation is “reminiscent of” measles, which can cause immune amnesia by depleting memory B cells (a different type of immune cell), leaving people vulnerable to pathogens they were previously immune to.

  Brazilian researchers found that covid-19 triggered a sharp rise in T cell exhaustion and cellular ageing.10 Although the comparator group was limited, the strongest effects were seen in CD8+ T cells, which suppress latent viruses such as EBV and VZV. These effects were seen even after mild infections.

rather more than

  > diseases tend to mutate faster when infecting larger number of people

Regardless, all paths land on

  > its more like the latter.

( > your immune system .. tends to be depleted like your blood sugar. )

▲ fzeroracer 13 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> Lots of people experienced stuff like “getting chickenpox and then gaining immunity,”

Using chickenpox as an example of people's common knowledge of immunity is inadvertently very funny here.